Kill the Last Sheep With a Star-Shaped Mark, 2023

In Haruki Murakami’s book “A Wild Sheep Chase”, the sheep with a star-shaped mark was considered as a symbol of centralisation and violence, wrapped inside the seemingly peaceful and prosperous society. Similar to the book’s plot, I think in rapidly developing society many have lost their identities, like empty shells, mindlessly receiving information and executing orders. While essential for a highly functioning society, such assimilation, often portrayed as “the right things”, has led to homogeneity of identification, values, and world ideology. In this work I tried to capture such contradiction by an overall setup of a beautiful figure-based landscape with heavy mist, desaturated colours, and the relatively unpleasing title.

Suxing Zhang (b.1988, Chinese) is a visual artist residing in Sydney. Zhang found his artistic voice through portraiture and landscape paintings that combine classic academic approaches with moments of abstraction. Zhang’s works focus on exploring the effect of time evolution on static subjects. Experience with painting as well as photography has been reflected in Zhang’s distinctive translation of lighting, composition, colour, and texture to form the overall harmony of his visual layouts.